Do you need a snowblower in Dover, DE?
The machine for a Dover driveway
A shovel is enough
A normal winter drops about 1.7 tons of snow on this driveway in Dover, spread over a few light falls. That is shovel work.
Get a wide plastic shovel with a bent handle before the first fall, and if you have a bad back, consider a cordless single-stage instead: the snow in Dover is light enough for one.
A normal Dover winter
- Snow a year
- 13 in
- Storms of 5 in or more
- 0.7 a winter
- Storms of 10 in or more
- about once every 5 winters
- Days with snow on the ground
- 9
Light, below most snowy cities. A typical snowy US city gets about 2.5 times as much. It tends to stay, so each storm lands on the last one.
On a two car driveway that is about 1.7 tons of snow to move in a season, and a 10 inch storm weighs 2,600 pounds.
When the snow comes in Dover
- Dec2.6
- Jan4.1
- Feb5.9
- Mar0.6
Snow worth clearing runs from December to February, heaviest in February. Buy the shovel before the first fall, when stores still have them.
Dover and its neighbours
Dover is number 3 of 6 Delaware towns here for snowfall; Newark gets the most at 20 inches.
| Town | Miles | Snow | Two car, paved |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smyrna, DE | 10 | 13 in | A shovel is enough |
| Milford, DE | 18 | 13 in | A shovel is enough |
| Middletown, DE | 22 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
| Bridgeton, NJ | 24 | 12 in | A shovel is enough |
| Millville, NJ | 30 | 12 in | A shovel is enough |
| Elkton, MD | 35 | 20 in | A shovel is enough |
Where these numbers come from
Read next: What a winter of snow weighs and Why storm depth matters more than snowfall.
NOAA 1991 to 2020 climate normals from Dover, 1.3 miles from Dover. A normal winter, not this winter's forecast. Snow is weighed at 6.24 pounds a cubic foot, fresh and fairly dry; wet spring snow can weigh three times that.